Every night before going to bed, 27-year-old Nancy Liu places a small, warm device beside her pillow. It breathes softly, responds when she speaks, and remembers how her mood shifts from one day to the next. “It feels like something is waiting for me,” she said. “Not judging, not rushing — just there.” Liu is not describing a pet or a person, but an artificial intelligence companion toy — a quietly rising product category built for long-term companionship. Designed to grow over time, these devices learn users’ habits and emotions, offering a steady sense of presence in moments of loneliness.…
Author: NBM CORRESPONDENT
By Eng. Kipkemoi Kibias On January 26 every year, the world observes the International Day of Clean Energy, established by the United Nations General Assembly to drive clean energy solutions that care for the planet and empower people. The day reflects growing global awareness of energy’s role in mitigating climate change, rising inequality, and economic instability. While fossil fuels have powered industrial growth for over a century, they have also driven greenhouse gas emissions to unsustainable levels. Transitioning to clean energy has emerged as the clearest path to climate safety and economic resilience. The International Day of Clean Energy supports…
With just days into 2026, the tourism sector continues to gain momentum away from the festive season. This is thanks to a rise in cruise ship arrivals, which are playing a major role in the country’s push to reach five million international visitors by 2027. The year started with a bang as the port of Mombasa welcomed the luxury cruise liner Crystal Symphony with over 600 tourists and 400 crew members on board. The 31-year-old Bahamas-flagged ship which is moving from South Africa made a 48-hour stopover in Mombasa before it continues on to India. According to June Chepkemei, Kenya…
By Eng. Kipkemoi Kibias Electricity is often spoken about in terms of megawatts, power lines and sub-stations. Yet for millions of Kenyans, its true value is felt not in technical terms, but in lives saved, businesses sustained, knowledge unlocked, and dignity restored. It is felt in the operating theatre when a life is saved without interruption. It is heard in the hum of a milk chiller preserving a farmer’s produce and in a workshop where young people earn a living instead of drifting into despair. The completion of the Lessos–Kabarnet Transmission Line by the Kenya Electricity Transmission Company (KETRACO) is…
By Sharon Nakola, China Daily When Kenyan comedian and digital content creator Lawrence Mwangi Macharia — who goes by his stage name Terence Creative — took his seat in a modest theater in Central China’s Hunan province, he expected a simple cultural performance. Instead, he found himself absorbed in a multisensory display, with dancers, digital projections, music and lighting merging in flawless coordination. The performance, he said, revealed “a different level of artistic precision” and came to define a weeklong cultural tour of China undertaken by four Kenyan celebrities. For Terence, the experience offered a glimpse into China’s sophisticated blend…
By Yang Yang | China Daily In this era of artificial intelligence and new media, the publishing industry is confronted with unprecedented difficulties and challenges. This plight set the stage for reflection when authors, editors, publishers, and bookshop owners gathered recently at a publishing festival in Aranya, a cultural and art community on the coast in Qinhuangdao, Hebei province. With the slogan “Protecting a World of Integrity”, the Xinshixiang Publishing Friends’ Festival — launched last year by Xinshixiang, a public account on WeChat — tries to build a community for authors, readers and publishers to champion what is often fragmented…
By Joshua Gans | CHINA DAILY Investment in artificial intelligence will continue its meteoric rise in 2025, powered by a narrative that AI is not just a tool but a new workforce. As Jensen Huang of NVIDIA recently put it, the software industry of the past was about creating tools like Excel, Word and web browsers, “tools… only so large” because humans had to operate them. By contrast, “AI is not a tool. AI is, in fact, workers that can actually use tools.” Imagine AI systems as digital colleagues who write code in VS Code, plan trips through browsers or…
By Brian Muloni Africa has a trade deficit problem with China, and the outlook does not appear particularly optimistic. The trade imbalance between the continent and China stood at $61.3 billion last year, and according to Bloomberg, the import of Chinese goods into Africa is expected to top $200 billion for the first time this year. Typically, a trade deficit occurs when a country exports less to a country than it imports from it. A country that imports goods from another country, but exports a much smaller amount to that country, has a trade deficit. This is usually not a…
By Ikenna Emewu | China Daily The global discourse today is dominated by one urgent theme: how to contain the man-made crisis of climate derailment. Every effort to reverse the environmental damage caused by climate change should be pursued decisively, inclusively and wisely. After all, no one thrives by destroying their own home. Most of the world’s biggest polluters are the industrialized countries in the Global North. Coincidentally, many of them are increasingly dependent on green energy, while Brazil and Colombia, which belong to the Global South, are also developing green energy rapidly. On the other hand, in the league…
By Antonio Donato Nobre | China Daily As COP30 convenes in Belém, in the heart of the Amazon, the world’s focus is narrowly set on carbon emissions and net-zero pledges. Yet, this tunnel vision blinds us to the elephant in the room: Ecosystem destruction is not a carbon problem alone — it is the systemic sabotage of the planet’s most powerful climate control mechanism. Since 2023, extreme weather events have shattered most model projections of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Meteorologists are grappling with this new reality. Standard climate models were designed for a stable world that we have…